Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

It's looking better now.  It would be nicer if the links (to the Gindex, comments, etc.) were set above the collage; if a variant surrounds a link, I can't get to the link to click it, since the collage variant takes focus in front of the link.  It probably makes sense to do this for the login box and for the logo at the top left of the screen as well.

I've moved the top images down lower to avoid the header, and I've given the logo and the login form higher z-levels. I decided not to protect the whole header, because some of the link images need the space over the banner. The entire footer is protected from images appearing over it when you have the mouse in it.

I've now added a menu to the header. Just hover over the logo, and it appears.

The contents of the menu are excellent; however, there are a few problems:

• The background color does not contrast well enough with the screen background (if you do not want to change the color, you might want to add a border). (I am using an LCD monitor)
• If you move the mouse pointer down, then the entire menu sometimes closes just before or on "Recognized Chess Variants" as the "Play.Chessvariants.org" submenu is closing. (In Mozilla-based browser)

I have one other suggestion which you might or might not like:

• Change the ALT text of the logo graphic to "Menu" (or something containing "Menu") so that it is clear when images are disabled, what that means.

I renamed index.html to index-old.html, and index.php then automatically became the new homepage. It even acquired its index entry in the database without editing it.

I have modified the menu that now appears in the header. It now includes submenus, allowing for better organization and a greater number of links. There are borders around the menus, and the ALT text has been changed for people who have images turned off. It is working well in Firefox, Internet Explorer 8.0, and my PC version of Safari. In Opera, submenus appear too low, but you can reach them by moving the mouse carefully. In Chrome, they are mostly working, but one submenu is too low, as in Opera, and I can't tell what is making the difference. On the iPad, submenus are not working. Maybe it would help to include a transparent GIF on submenu lines.

Although I cannot use PHP to get the window or screen width, I have learned how to provide CSS code customized to different window widths. Now, narrower windows omit the two inner columns of games, and even narrower windows omit all the games, and the images for games mentioned in the text appear above the links to them instead of potentially covering them. Also, the pinned games have been moved to the two outer columns, so that (1) they are still there in narrower windows, and (2) they will not cover up the text links to them.

If there is a need for it, such as for the CD-ROM, I can create an index.html file that includes the index.php code in the same manner as headers are included in HTML files on this site with an alternate version in HTML.

This page can now handle even narrower widths better. When it gets below the width of the large logo, the large logo disappears, and hovering over links will no longer pop up images. However, I can't get it any narrower than the width of the small logo plus the width of the login form, because nothing I've tried has gotten them to split into separate rows when the window gets smaller.

I've also added some CSS to fix how the comments appear on this page, so that game images are not showing up in the borders between table cells.

The menu structure is now improved; but there is another thing wrong this time: the submenus are too far low that it is difficult to click them before they disappear. (You said you had this problem with some other browsers; this shows that you should fix it for other browsers too.) (I do have a workaround currently: hover the submenu title, click it to move the current tab stop, and then tab to the selection)

I have the low submenus fixed in Chrome but not in Opera. What browser and operating system are you using?

The low submenus are now fixed in Opera, and they are also working correctly in Firefox, Internet Explorer 8, Safari, and Chrome, all under Windows XP. How are they working in your browser?

I have added some padding to the bottom of the menu and each submenu to keep the menu from suddenly disappearing when you reach the bottom.

The menu is now working with the iPad. I added a transparent gif over each submenu menu item, so that the submenu opens when you touch it.

The other day, I tried the new menu on a Samsung Galaxy Tablet with Honeycomb, and it did not work well. Since I don't own this device, I can't just experiment with it until I find out what works. If any of you own such a device, you might be able to help me get it to work on your device. You just need to create a local copy of the menu and experiment with changing the code until you find out what works. You can find all the code for the menu in the page source. It includes a block of CSS code in STYLE tags, referring to DIV#menu, and the HTML is all within a DIV block with the ID of menu. It also makes use of two images. One is the small logo, and the other is a single pixel transparent GIF at http://www.chessvariants.org/login/transparent.gif

The menu now works on the Samsung Galaxy Tablet with Honeycomb. The solution came to me when I woke up yesterday.

I have been adding a "Related Pages" section to the menu. This section is drawn from the database. It includes the sections Primary, Secondary, Followers, Remote, Categories, Same Inventor, and Same Co-Inventor. Which ones appear will depend on database entries. The Primary section is for pages in the same group. The Secondary section is for pages whose primary group is this page's secondary group. The Followers section is for pages whose secondary group is this page's primary group. The Remote section is for pages in the same secondary group. Note that I am treating the first group as a primary group and the second group as a secondary group. This is not how page authors have always treated these groups in the past. For example, there are Shogi variants which list shogi as the primary group. It would be more appropriate for them to list shogi as a secondary group, reserving the primary group for pages on the very same game. The Categories section lists the categories the page is in, providing links to the appropriate index pages. The Same Inventor and Same Co-Inventor sections list the other games by each inventor. In the case of Charles Gilman, this list gets really long, but the menus are scrollable with the page, as long as the pointer stays within the submenu boundaries. If this doesn't work on the iPad, I might change it.

The Related Pages section also includes icons before the links. I have added two new icons. A pointing index finger icon for index links, and the favicon image for miscellaneous pages.

What format are the videos? Wikipedia uses Theora and that is what I recommend, but of course you could have it be any formats whatever is available. (Or you could prefer others; whichever works.)

Also, for the new item types, what are the values for the "type" parameter to search for them?

We don't host videos here. The Video type is for external link pages to videos on other sites, and the format is any format hosted by other sites.

The type values are "Video" and "YouTube".

It's doable, but you would have to be a member for it to work for you.